What do you mamas do for your kiddos for St. Patty's Day?
To be completely honest other than buying them an outfit for the day I really don't do much. It's my birthday so they usually do something for me :)
Oh yay!! A great question! Each year the "leprechauns" come to our house! These are some things that I/they do.....
Every year - green toilet water & green milk. My son's green Legos all assembled into some structure (he doesn't get his engineering skills from me! LOL) The table/chairs overturned, the furniture re-arranged. One year, my husband and his friend put green food coloring into some chocolate frosting and said it was a leprechaun animal who left their mark. GROSS!!! They did that after I went to bed! :) I have scattered green confetti around. I made little tiny green "footprints" out of marker on the stove, kitchen counter, etc. I have hidden things and we've had to go looking for them (backpacks, shoes, homework, etc.) Of course, I make sure my kids are up in plenty of time to do this -and I know where it is, so we aren't REALLY looking). The dogs have been "tainted" green and green scarves just appear on them, like magic :) They find the wrong cereal bag in the wrong cereal box, or the all the green items I can find, in a pile in the middle of the table. I'm sure there are more, but that's all I can think of right now. I fix corned beef and cabbage on St Patty's Day, as well as Irish Soda bread or Beer bread. LOVE it!!
Ask me about April Fool's Day - SOOOOO much more to share!!!
A leprechaun usually sneaks into our house and causes all sorts of mischief. Last year, the scrambled eggs suddenly turned green... also the pancakes, butter, milk, and sandwich bread turned green. One child suspects there is no actual leprechaun, only a mom with a bottle of green food coloring. However, I have a feeling we might find leprechaun footprints in the flour on the kitchen counter this year (thanks to some Barbie shoes).
Breakfast this year will be rainbow waffles http://www.bedifferentactnormal.com/2011/03/rainbow-waffl... since leprechauns often hide their pot of gold at the end of a rainbow. Making leprechaun sugar cookies to send with kids for lunch and to deliver to friends. Dinner is usually Irish food, this year we are just doing pork chops, colcannon, Irish soda bread and green salad. We are doing a treasure hunt to find a "pot of gold" which is actually just a pot of butterscotch candies since I could not find the chocolate gold coins.
Love having little ones around, they certainly make holidays a lot more fun!
*EDIT: Geez, Mom4s, you put me to shame! I am going to have to steal your ideas!
Naturally I dressed them in green so they wouldnt get pinched at school. Nowadays I guess it's totally against the rules to touch each other so the whole pinching thing is probably a thing of the past.
I always made green scramble eggs for breakfast.
Anything else edible or drinkable that would turn green with food color was green that day.
We have a lot of Irish in our family so St Paddys Day was always a day to celebrate and just have fun......
Corned beef and cabbage was dinner.
Decorate, dress in green and cook in green!!!!! Green mashed potatoes, etc.
At some point during the day I would sneak some green food coloring into the water in the toilet and tell my daughter that it meant a leprechaun had visited. She loved to check it and got all excited when one had visited. I made sure she checked once or twice before I added the food coloring.
Oh my goodness...I consider myself to be fairly well versed in themes, but you all put me to shame! ;) Sounds fun, I will have to incorporate some of these things! We usually make a big deal out of going to the big parade downtown. Ours is always on St. Pat's no matter what day of the week. We dress in green, of course!
When it falls during Spring Break, we go to a local establishment that has Irish bands, dancers and groups preforming all day. I send out an email to everyone and lots of people join us.
If it falls during the school year, I used to send her all green foods and serve her green milk for breakfast.
LOVE some of the ideas I saw on here, so yay for your question. We make a leprechaun trap to try and catch one. Haven't succeeded yet though. Little guy does leave us a couple coins but he played a trick on us and the coins turned to chocolate.
When we were first married, I did the big corned beef, cabbage, carrots, potatoes dinner with Irish soda bread and cider jelly thumbprint cookies. I did that as a treat for my father in law, and he loved me, lol. But now that he's passed away, to tell the truth I really don't like such a bland dinner. We give a little nod to it by doing reuben sandwiches (sliced corned beef from the deli, saurkraut which is cabbage (lol) and swiss cheese, done like a grilled cheese), fried potato slices, and Guinness stout for us and green Hawaiian punch for the kids. Our dessert a little later is bananas cooked in Irish whiskey and brown sugar, then served with ice cream. Not exactly an "Irish meal" but we like it, and we use Irish components and just improved on it, to our tastes. :P
Honestly, I don't know much of anything at all about St Patrick except that he explained the Holy Trinity (3 but 1) by using shamrocks. I've heard he's a Briton, I've heard he's French, I don't know anything. Perhaps we'll make an effort the first part of March next year to do some studying on who he was. After all, it's not "really" an Irish holiday or a drinking holiday, but one that's supposed to celebrate a saint. I think that'd be a fun project for us to do as a family: find out who St Patrick was. But the extra stuff is fun too.
Green pancakes...every year for as long as I can remember until we left the nest and now my oldest is 2 1/2 now so I am so excited to start it up again! Have fun!
we make green food and do crafts that involve shamrocks. My daughter has an awesome book about St. Patrick and we read that too.
Meh, my parents were awful holiday spirit sort of people. ME on the other hand . . . .lets see, I bought my son a new St. Patties day shirt, I am looking for one for me, I want to make him green eggs and ham that day, I am going to be painting my nails green. I might actually buy green kool aid. . .not a fan of it, but it's a holiday. Ok I'm not like momof4, but man I wish I was!!!! Great ideas!
This has always been a special holiday for our family. My grandparents were Irish. My grandpop immigrated from Ireland in1922 with some of his siblings. My grandmoms parents were actually from the same town as my grandpop. They came over one generation earlier.
As a child my mom always did something special on St Patrick's Day.
Now that I am a mom I make cranberry scones.
We celebrate our son's Patrick Patron Saint with lot of love and laughter. We eat Irish Soda bread homemade in the morning with lots of butter and read the Saint Patrick's breast plate prayer. Then we all dress in green, watch the Saint Patrick's Day parade on tv. We usually have friends over and enjoy a great traditional dinner with corned beef and cabbage, more irish soda bread, homemade green butter cookies and later on(after our son is asleep) have a few Guinesses and watch a movie!
I'm dressing my baby up in green and taking a ton of pictures. We're going to color a green picture for Daddy. I am hoping we can deliver some St. Patty's day treats to my SO's work. For lunch the baby and I are going to have a pesto pasta and green jello for dessert.
I am not sure yet if my inlaws are doing the cornbeef dinner or me.
My mom used to do the leprechaun thing when we were kids it was always tons of fun....i'll probably start next year though.....when she can understand it better.
